We see the injustice, hear the wailing cries of the
oppressed, but we respond with milk-toast theological answers. What
does it matter if God loves, when your loved one is being raped then her heart
literally torn out, or when they are being beheaded and heads displayed, all in
the name of some supreme god? That god seems angry, and if God is
loving, He sure doesn’t seem to show it, or appear to care about certain
(ethnic) groups of people being slaughtered wholesale.
We minister His healing with the ministry of our tears
mingling with theirs, with our presence in their grief, and with practical love
to clothe, feed, and warm. But when pressed, we MUST have answers which
work, which are Good News for the hurting, which bind their broken hearts and
heal the deep wounds.
What kind of God DO we serve? Let’s not emasculate Him. Let’s not share only half the Gospel.
He is Divinely angry at evil.
“Who can stand before His indignation? Who can endure His
anger? His wrath is poured out like fire, the rocks are broken asunder by Him”
(Nahum 1:6).
“But the Lord is the true God; He is the living God and
the everlasting King. At His wrath the earth quakes, and the nations cannot
endure His indignation” (Jeremiah 10:10).
God’s anger is not unpredictable or irrational; He is not
given to fits of spontaneous outbursts, his is not a blind explosive
force. His anger is an instrument of response to man, it is purposeful, a
secondary passion, not a ruling passion. His anger is not at all like
human anger, but more like righteous indignation.
Righteous Indignation: “the emotion aroused by that
which is considered mean, shameful or sinful, it is impatience with evil, a
motion of the soul rousing itself to curb sins.”1
If God has righteous indignation, and we are made in His image (Gen. 1:26),
then it is godly to be righteously angry at the evil being perpetrated and not
to simply present only His love.
The foundation of all Biblical thinking is “The Lord
is good to all, and His compassion is over all that He has made”
Ps.145:9. But as a righteous Judge, righteous indignation is part of Him.
“God is a righteous Judge, a God Who has indignation every day (Ps. 7:11).
God’s concern is the prerequisite and source of His anger. Because of His
care for man His anger is kindled against man. Anger and mercy are not
opposites but correlatives.2 His anger is conditional,
and when man repents, he relents. He is both slow to anger and His judgment
comes too quickly.
As a mode of His emotions, His anger may characterize the
anger of the Lord as “suspended love, as mercy withheld, as mercy in
concealment” (Jer.12:14-15, Lam.3:31-32). Heschel continues, “Since justice is
His nature, love, which would disregard the evil deeds of man, would contradict
His nature. Because of His concern for man, His justice is tempered with mercy.
Divine anger is not the antithesis of love, but its counterpart, a help to
justice as demanded by true love.”3 We must remember that
God’s anger is both preceded and followed by God’s compassion (Jer 12:15;
33:26).
His anger abates at our repentance. Our we praying for
the repentance of our enemies? Are we seeing even the worst evil doers as
people we could be? Are we moaning and seeing the situation as hopeless?
That is not the way the prophets saw it, and it isn’t Biblical. Now is
the time for calling on evil doers to repent (Jer 26:13) before the judgment of
God’s anger falls.
As we experience and understand at ever deeper levels in our soul the One True God in the totality of His
being we are more effective ministers of His love to a dying and hurting generation.
- Heschel, The Prophets Vol II page 63
- Ibid, p.62-63
- Ibid, p.77
